“Crazy Rich Asians” star Constance Wu has returned with a memoir after a three-year long mental hiatus. She is also opening up about attempting suicide in 2019 after the backlash she received for the “Fresh Off The Boat” tweet. Read on to learn more about what the star has to say.
Constance Is Back After A Mental Hiatus…
— Constance Wu (@ConstanceWu) July 14, 2022
“Crazy Rich Asians” star Constance Wu said the backlash she received from a series of tweets in 2019 led her to a suicide attempt. In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday (July 15), Wu announced her return to social media after a three-year-long hiatus and also about experiencing mental health issues.
While explaining that she has returned with a memoir Making a Scene, Wu wrote, “I haven’t been on social media in almost 3 years. “Tbh, I’m a little scared, but I’m dipping my toe back in to say I’m here and while I was gone I wrote a book called Making a Scene. This next part is hard to talk about…but I was afraid of coming back on social media because I almost lost my life from it: 3 years ago when I made careless tweets about the renewal of my TV show, it ignited outrage and internet shaming that got pretty severe.”
She continued, “I felt awful about what I’d said, and when a few DMs from a fellow Asian actress told me I’d become a blight on the Asian American community, I started feeling like I didn’t even deserve to live anymore. That I was a disgrace to AsAms, and they’d be better off without me. Looking back, it’s surreal that a few DMs convinced me to end my own life, but that’s what happened. Luckily, a friend found me and rushed me to the ER.”
Wu revealed in her tweet that she felt awful about what she said in 2019 and when a few DMs from a fellow Asian actress pointed at the fact that she had become a blight on the Asian American community, she started feeling like she didn’t deserve to live anymore. This drove her to commit suicide, and a friend had to rush her to the hospital. She said since then she’s spent time away from her career and social media to focus on her mental health.
What Was The “Fresh Off The Boat” Tweet?
In May 2019, the “Crazy Rich Asians” star tweeted that she was “so upset right now that I’m literally crying” following the “Fresh Off The Boat” Season 6 renewal of the ABC series. Later, she said that she had been misunderstood and was upset that the renewal meant she had to give up another project. She tweeted again:
“I love FOTB. I was temporarily upset yesterday not bc I hate the show but bc its renewal meant I had to give up another project that I was really passionate about,” she wrote at the time. “So my dismayed social media replies were more about that other project and not about FOTB.”
Wu played the mother, Jessica, on “Fresh Off the Boat”, created by Nahnatchka Khan and based on the memoir by Eddie Huang. The series that ran from 2015-2020 on ABC, followed the Huang family, including mom, dad, Mandarian-speaking grandma and three young brothers, who move from Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown to Orlando in the mid-1990s.
